General Electric boosted Chief Executive Officer Jeffrey Immelt's base salary by 6 percent last year, his first raise since 2005, after he nursed the company back to health following the 2008-09 financial crisis.

Immelt, who has grown the industrial unit while shrinking the finance business that once imperiled GE, made a base salary of $3.5 million effective March 1, 2013, up from $3.3 million, the company said Wednesday in a U.S. regulatory filing. His cash bonus increased 11 percent to $5 million, and he received 400,000 performance share units, up from none a year earlier.

The increase reflected "the extraordinary complexity and scope of transforming and leading GE through a period of competitive and global economic change," the company said.

For the full year, Immelt's total compensation excluding changes in pension value fell to $19.2 million from $20.6 million in 2012. A year earlier, Fairfield-based GE reported the full three-year effect of a long-term performance award for Immelt, 58, while the 2013 total covered only one year of a new plan, according to the filing.

As one of the final moves to reshape GE around industrial businesses, Immelt plans to spin off the North American consumer credit unit by 2015 in a two-step transaction starting this year with an initial public offering.

GE is concentrating investment in fields such as energy, health care and aerospace after Norwalk-based GE Capital put the parent company at risk when credit markets froze in the financial crisis.